Kevin Luby
English 337 Oral Traditions
Dr. Sexson
The Memory, Imagination, and Soul of Mythtelling
Sean Kane writes in his novel Wisdom of the Mythtellers “[…] myths were not merely flights of the imagination; they were flights of the spirit, with the narrative acting as the conduit of supernatural energies summoned and made present by story, and the mythteller acting as the conductor of the souls of the listeners” (104). But why did mythtellers control such power? Paraphrasing Aristotle, Frances Yates writes “memory…belongs to the same part of the soul as imagination; it is a collection of mental pictures form sense impressions but with a time element added, for the mental images of memory are not from perception of things present but of things past” (33). In an oral tradition, storytellers held the key to personal development, morally, socially, and spiritually. They molded the youth of the tribe. They taught future leaders, future shaman, and future farmers the knowledge needed to survive in a threatening world. Stories capture the imagination, and according to Aristotle, imagination connects with memory. Both memory and imagination lie in the soul and as a result, the storyteller’s guidance of the soul becomes the single greatest influence on the development of the mind.
Myths teach people how to interact with the world. “Exchange with the world is made at the mouth, nose, ears, eyes, anus, sexual organs, and the skin itself” (Kane 103). Before print, myths were used to teach children about poisonous berries, the weather, planting crops, and medical uses for plants. These myths appealed to the imagination as colorful characters acted as the guinea pigs of the natural world. For example excess pride will cause downfall as in the story of Icarus. Myths remain in the collective consciousness of the tribe and teach important lessons of development and survival. Initially, these stories guided developing souls by means of imagination and memory however, the mythteller’s true gift extends beyond practical knowledge. The storyteller and his myths play a crucial part in the development of all knowledge.
Paraphrasing Plato, Yates writes:
The Phaedrus is a treatise on rhetoric in which rhetoric is regarded, not as an art of persuasion to be used for personal or political advantage, but as an art of speaking the truth and of persuading hearers to the truth. The power to do this depends on knowledge of the soul and the soul’s true knowledge consists in the recollection of the Ideas. Memory is not a ‘section’ of this treatise as one part of the art of rhetoric; memory in the Platonic sense is the groundwork of the whole. (37)
Plato’s theory of forms states that all knowledge comes hardwired into the brain upon birth. Accessing this information requires little more than the proper thought or more specifically, proper remembrance. Truth depends on the knowledge of the soul and its two main aspects, memory and imagination. If truth lies in the soul, then the person responsible for developing the soul holds the key to knowledge. Enter the mythteller and his true purpose in mythtelling. Because myths develop the memory and imagination, they offer the gateway to not just practical knowledge but all knowledge of the past, present, and still to come. A well developed memory and imagination allows access to the knowledge described by Plato in his theory of forms. Cicero argues for the power of memory and imagination, “assuredly nothing can be apprehended even in God of greater value than this … Therefore the soul is, as I say, divine, as Euripides dares say, God …” (Yates 47). Thus, the power imparted by an oral mythteller through his stories surpasses the power of God. Stories that teach what is, what was, and what will be empower a human with the divine, which explains why religion roots in myth and storytellers become demi-gods.
Several centuries later, Giordano Bruno echoes the ideas of Plato and Aristotle:
"Since the divine mind is universally present in the world of nature the process of coming to know the divine mind must be through the reflection of the images of the world of sense within the mens. Therefore the function of the imagination of ordering the images in memory is an absolutely vital one in the cognitive process. Vital and living images will reflect the vitality and life of the world--and he has in mind both magically vitalized astral images and the living striking images of the 'Ad Herennian' memory rule (Yates 259)"
By viewing the “mens” described by Bruno as the soul, we gain an even clearer picture of the powerful trinity developed by Aristotle and Plato. "As the world is said to be the image of God, so Trismegistus does not fear to call man the image of the world [...] man is the 'great miracle' [...] his mens is divine (Yates ???)” The ordered arrangement of the images in the memory creates the divine mind and joins with the divine consciousness of the world. According to Bruno, the world is another entity with whom we converse. Humans build and share knowledge with the world just as we would with each other. The myths of oral storytellers create the dialogue with the earth that taps into its available knowledge. As Sean Kane states in his book, human tradition dictates myth thus allowing them to be apart of the conversation. The earth learns of humans just as humans learn of the earth, through the mythic conversation. In oral cultures, storytellers nurtured this conversation by developing the imagination, the memory, and the soul and the conversation continues in the literate tradition though in a slightly varied form.
The residual influence of the oral storytelling tradition, though not as formal and revered, appears in childhood development today. Countless studies indicate that exposing young children to aural stimulus aids development. Reading fairytales (the modern day myth), listening to classical music, and speaking other languages work in a similar fashion today as myths did thousands of years ago. “Sound is thus a unifying sense,” writes Walter Ong in Orality and Literacy “[…] knowledge is ultimately not a fractioning but a unifying phenomenon, a striving for harmony. Without harmony, an interior condition, the psyche is in bad health” (71-72). “Sound […] exists only when it’s going out of existence” (Ong 90). It is up to the imagination to comprehend something that only exists instantaneously. The imagination must connect a sound to a concrete object or visualize a sound as an action. While the imagination processes sound, memory stores it and the soul critiques the whole experience resulting in the cognitive process. Reasonably, exposure to aural stimulus begins the development of the “unifying phenomenon” called knowledge through the development of the imagination and memory just as myths did millennia ago.
Today, people rarely sit down with a storyteller and listen to myths about the dangers of the world. Very few cultures continue to deify oral storytellers because of their position as knowledge transfers between earth and human and vise versa. None-the-less, knowledge still comes from a divine mind created through a trinity of the imagination, the memory, and the soul. In oral cultures, the primary method of gaining this knowledge was oral storytelling, thus myth and mythtelling held ultimate importance. Today, aural stimulus builds knowledge and remains inextricably connected to memory, imagination, and soul. Humans still rely on myths and orality to convey knowledge as the basic workings of the brain remains unchanged since the time of oral cultures. The human instinct of learning has preserved myth as myths offer the most effective method of understanding the lessons of the world.
